Billion Dollar Enemy: Chapter 19

I’m in the storage room when my carefully constructed double-life comes crashing down around me. It’s done in a heartbeat. I should have been able to predict it—and the fact that I haven’t makes me question not just my morals, but my intellect too.

I overhear the whole thing.

“Want to see something cool?” Timmy asks Karli, having arrived earlier than usual from school.

She indulges him with a smile in her voice. “Absolutely.”

“This is one of my signed baseballs. I brought it along to school today to show my friends.”

“Wow! Where did you get that?” she asks.

I’m out of the storage room and halfway through the room, but I’m not fast enough. There’s no stopping what’s said next.

“I went to a baseball game last week.” The pride in Timmy’s voice kills me. “Skye and Cole took me. We had the best seats.”

“Cole?”

“Yeah. Skye’s boyfriend. He gave me tips for the coming tryouts, too.”

Karli turns to me, where I stand breathless and guilty in the doorway. “Skye?”

“Yeah.”

“Which Cole is this?”

I can’t talk. I can’t even breathe, wondering if the guilt is like a shining beacon from my eyes.

It must be, because hers widen with horror. “Skye!”

“I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

“How?”

Timmy’s eyes are moving from one of us to the other, and I shake my head at Karli. She catches on immediately. “Sorry,” she tells Timmy. “That’s lovely, and I’m glad you got to go to the game. Skye and I just need a moment, okay?”

He nods sulkily and gives me a reproachful look through his glasses. He hates being left out of the conversation, but he dutifully turns back to his homework.

Karli follows me out to the register. “How could you, Skye?” she asks in a low voice. “You hated him more than I did!”

“I know. I still do. I… remember the one-night stand I had?”

“The unreal hotel guy?”

“Yes. It was him. I didn’t know it then, of course. And then he walked in here and I was so angry… and then it somehow turned into more.” I run a hand through my hair. “I barely understand it myself, Karli.”

Her mouth is a tight line. “So that’s why he agreed to the two-month deal. I thought he was just a bull and you’d waved a red flag.”

“Yes, well, that too. He’s competitive.”

“How could you not have told me something like this? Our business relationship with Porter Development concerns me too. It’s my livelihood, Skye!”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I wanted to, several times, but I was afraid of what you’d say, or worse, what you’d think of me.”

Her eyes soften, but it’s just a tad. “Relationships are complicated. Emotions are complicated. You should have given me a chance to understand.”

“I should’ve.” I lean against the counter, my heart pounding like I’ve been running sprints. “We’ve kept it very casual. He doesn’t have anything to leverage against us, Karli.”

She puts a hand on my shoulder. “Skye, for Christ’s sake, of course he doesn’t. But what about you? What’s going to happen when this all ends? I don’t want you getting hurt!”

I take a deep breath. “I don’t think I will. At least, not if we win.”

It’s a half-hearted joke, and she smiles, but it’s probably for my sake. “I hope so, and I hope he’s been treating you right through all this. He was my enemy before, but then it was just business. If he hurts you, Skye… well, then it’s personal.”

She looks so determined, and so fierce all of a sudden, that I get a lump in my throat. “Thank you, Karli.”

She pulls me into a hug, far warmer than I deserve. “I’m still angry at you for not telling me,” she says. “But I’m still in your corner, as always. Tomorrow, when Timmy’s not here, I want you to tell me everything.”

“I’ll tell you. I promise.”

“Good.” She holds me at arm’s-length distance, a faint smile on her lips. “You’re living your own grand story at the moment, it seems.”

A surprised laugh escapes me. “Yes. It’s awfully exciting. Perhaps too much. I’m barely holding it together.”

“Well,” she says, “just make sure you write about it when it’s all over, okay? Remember what Eleanor used to say. It’s your mistakes that give you the best stories.”

Despite Karli’s calm acceptance, I feel guilty for the rest of the day and unable to fall asleep at night. Seeing Cole and I through someone else’s eyes—someone who isn’t ten years old and my nephew—made the whole thing feel less somehow. Almost cheap. A daring adventure in the dark can look very different when it’s brought out into the harsh light of day.

I shake my head at myself. Focus on Between the Pages. That’s the whole point of this thing, anyway. To see this place torn down would tear me apart, and besides, Cole and I have no future. We’d never discussed it, but it was clear in the way both of us spoke. With five days until the deadline for delivering our financial reports to Porter Development, our time’s numbered and the clock is ticking.

And our final meeting with Chloe is here. It’s the last time we’ll be able to go over the financials before the deadline, the last time we’ll be able to course-correct.

“She’ll be here at five,” Karli says for the third time, rearranging the loyalty card display on the register. “She said she’d bring her calculations with her.”

“Awesome,” I say, sorting through the register.

She taps her fingers against the counter. “How can you be so calm?”

“Because I know we’ve managed to become profitable.”

“You know it?”

“Yes.” I give her my most confident smile. “You and I have both seen the numbers go up. How many more customers have we had in the last week than usual?”

“Well, a lot. Your flyers helped, and the book signing event. And the Instagram page. Oh Skye, we should have started with these changes ages ago!”

The thought had struck me, too. “Yes. But it’s never too late to learn,” I say. “They’ll see that we’ve turned it around.”

Karli’s smile is grateful, even if it’s tinged with the same fear I’m concealing. “You’re right. We just have to breathe in and breathe out,” she says. “There’s nothing more we can do today.”

“Easy as that.” I look around the bookstore, at the artful crown molding around the built-in bookcases, at the beautiful wooden beams. Eleanor had added detail after detail over the decades, changing a newer building into something that looked centuries old.

There are markings with my height in the storage room. Eleanor had insisted on it, once I became a regular, when she was the one who helped me with my English homework.

I keep my smile in place for Karli, for the customers, but inside I’m just as afraid. For two months, this moment has been my guiding star, and the possibility of failure feels like an ice-cold hand around my heart.

When Chloe finally sweeps into the bookstore, it’s with a professional smile and another expensive bag on her arm. Karli gives me a single nod, and I nod back. Here we go.

We take a seat around the table in the reading room. Chloe’s manner is measured, professional, as she opens up her laptop. Nothing in her behavior hints at either success or failure. A good sign, I tell myself.

“First things first, here is your monthly accounting report.” She pushes a sheet with colorful graphics our way. “Your sales are up, which is very impressive, especially in this financial climate.”

I nod, looking over the numbers. Nausea sweeps through me at the thought, but I ask it regardless. “So? Has it been enough?”

Chloe sighs in defeat, and somewhere inside of me, something cracks. It might be my heart. “I’ve tried,” she says. “I really have. But no, it hasn’t been. It’s not enough to push you into the green as a business.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

Chloe gives me a sad smile. “I’m so sorry, Skye. Truly. I’ve run the numbers every which way, but there’s no way I can spin it so you look profitable.”

Karli opens and closes her mouth, no sound emerging.

“But we’ve had more customers,” I say faintly. “We’ve both seen the large uptick. We’ve sold for more than previous months, you just said so.”

“You have, yes. But not enough. I’m sorry, but there’s the large inventory and the high fixed costs. You’re just barely breaking even. This place hasn’t been truly profitable for months, and it’s a hard thing to turn around in such a short period of time.”

“How? We’ve done everything!”

Chloe turns her laptop around for us to see. And there, clear as day, are the numbers in accusing red. Two months’ worth of combined accounts.

“On a deal like this, they’re going to check my bookkeeping, so I can’t fudge either.”

Karli clears her throat. “We’d never ask you to.”

I would. Staring down at the wooden table, my gaze snags on a small act of vandalism. Someone had carved the word hope into the old wood. Someone who hadn’t yet learned how pointless that emotion was.

“When do we have to send the numbers to Porter?” I ask.

“In four days’ time,” Karli says. “But surely that’s too little time to…?”

“It is. Even if you triple your daily sales, it won’t be enough.” Chloe pauses, and it’s the look on her face that kills me, that tells me this is real. “I’m more sorry than you realize. I know this wasn’t what you hoped for, when you hired me.”

“It’s not your fault,” Karli says immediately. “Thank you for doing this for us, and for agreeing to the time pressure and deadline.”

She’s taking this better than I am. I just stare at Chloe’s screen—at the big red deficit—and feel like I’m falling, like this is a nightmare, one I’ve been dreading, and now that I’m here I can’t wake up.

I’m glad Eleanor can’t see us now.

Chloe gives me a hug before she leaves. My movements are on autopilot, and maybe she sees that, because she invites me over for dinner.

“For old time’s sake,” she says kindly. “Whenever you feel up for it, let me know.”

It’s nice, and I nod, but my insides are tearing themselves apart. How can this be? I watch in a daze as the front door shuts behind Chloe, the jingle of the bell obscene.

Karli turns to me. “I can’t—”

“We did everything—”

“You did so much!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!”

She wraps her arms around me, and me around her, and for a long time there are no words.

“We tried everything,” Karli finally murmurs. “Thank you, Skye. Thank you so much for believing in this. For negotiating those two extra months for us to try.”

I shake my head. “For nothing. I got our hopes up—”

“Nonsense. Between the Pages has touched so many lives in the past two months. It’s reached more people, and that’s because of you.”

“Us both.”

“Yes, well, I can’t take credit for half of your inventions.” Karli leans back, her eyes glittering. “We knew this day would come. We’d accepted it, months ago. We’ll learn to accept it again.”

I can’t accept it. Not yet, and maybe not ever. “How are you taking this so calmly?”

“Because this place had a five-decade run,” she says, her voice turning fierce. “Eleanor’s dream lives on in me, and it lives on in you, Skye. That’s what matters.”

Eleanor. We failed her.

When she died, she’d given me a set of leather-bound old editions and a beautiful note. Follow your dreams, Skye, and never doubt that you’re a born writer.

I still doubted.

I still needed this place.

Pulling out of Karli’s embrace, I reach for my phone with a trembling hand. “Maybe I can talk to Cole. Convince them to keep this place anyway. We have gained more customers, after all. That’s good?”

The smile Karli gives me is kind, but it’s not hopeful. “Honey, he’s a businessman. I don’t like him, even if you’ve told me the article didn’t paint a fair picture, but he’s still out to make money. And we’re not a good bet.”

“Yes we are.” I swipe left to open my phone and click open my texts.